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Playing old friends ‘special’ for Cudmore

Canada lock Jamie Cudmore revealed it was "special" to play for his country against so many of his Top 14 team-mates in their loss to France.

Cudmore was even caught trying to sneak in on France's pre-lineout plans when he snuck into the huddle in an amusing moment during the first half.

The Clermont lock was up against his club team-mates including Wesley Fofana, Damien Chouly and Morgan Parra and after years in the Top 14 was familar with France's starting XV.

"It was a special, special occasion playing against guys that week in, week out I play with or play against the rest of the time," Cudmore said.

"Definitely a special game. We wanted to do our best to produce as much play as we could and show that we really deserve to be on this stage playing against teams like France."

Canada never shied away from playing with ambition and scored two tries in the first half through Aaron Carpenter and DTH van der Merwe.

Cudmore added: “We want to play exciting rugby. We want to keep the volume high, keep a lot of the ball in play and that’s what modern rugby is.

"It’s exciting, it’s fun for us to play for the fans to see, we just need more chances to play against big teams like this."

Given that Canada were more than competitive for the majority of the contest, Cudmore believes that more games against top sides could turn them into a major competitor.

“We have got guys who play high-quality sevens but between sevens and 15s there is a big difference in timing and pressure and I think if we can get Canada playing a lot more high-quality games I guess we are going to start knocking off teams like France."